Bohemian Anniversary - tweaked

There are only two medium sized changes. The first change is to the trees and church tower that sit behind the bridge. I scraped out these areas as much as I could and then added back in a better range of greens for the trees and reworked the church tower adding some detail. The second change is to the reflection of the bridge gatehouse. This started to get scary with lots of wet colour around so I decided to leave this as soon as it resembled the reference photo a little more.

There are a number of minor sized changes. I tried to adjust the colour of the building on the far right back to white but this proved difficult so I left it as a paler pink. I tried to suggest the river cruiser a little more and then just flicked highlights here and there. I added some missing statues to the bridge, adjusted the existing ones and suggested the side buttresses that provide support for the statues. I made a slight mess in a small part of the sky so I reworked this by adding some high wispy cirrus clouds! Finally, I added a few random blobs of colour to suggest the people walking over the bridge.

The secret of course is knowing when to stop. I could carry on tweaking this until Kingdom Come but I won't. I'm much happier with it ... so that's it - done. Move on to the next one!

Charles Bridge, Prague, oil on paper, 9" x 12"

Bohemian Anniversary

It's still not that BIG painting I promised you all, but nethertheless it is just a little bit more adventurous for me, even if that is only due to the significant increase in the amount of paint that I used! This is based on a photograph I took of the wonderfully gothic Charles Bridge in Prague whilst on a scenic river cruise with my wife during a wonderful anniversary trip to the Czech Republic in 2009.

The bridge is quite a complex shape  so this time I decided to do an initial drawing of it, and with helpful suggestions from my wife I managed to get the gate tower in proportion with the rest of the structure. I applied paint initially with hog bristle brushes and then used mixed sable/synthetic brushes to blend and establish detail. I added a little oil painting medium to my mixtures for detail work or when the paint started to feel a bit too viscous. I'm still using short-handled brushes (a couple of which have been sawn to fit better in my pochade box) but I guess that will allow me to get used to working with them before I venture out for some much desired plein aire work - which should be very soon I hope! I will probably let this dry a little now and twiddle with some of the values and details a little later - but I'm happy enough to post it as it is now :)

Charles Bridge, Prague, oil on paper, 9" x 12"